Master Grade Gouf Custom...So Far

So the last order I made with some of the extra money I got for Christmas consisted of two kits. The Real Grade Zaku II that I just reviewed and a Master Grade Gouf Custom. Why Gouf Custom? I don't really know it just looks so awesome. The kit is not the newest I think it originally came out in 2000, and the articulation is not as good as the Gouf 2.0 but the Custom comes with the Gatling Shield and I couldn't have passed that up. I figured the Gouf would be the first kit I really went all out on and modified so why not get the cheaper on anyways? I did not want to screw up on a nicer kit.

So as of last week I finished up the pre-build on him and began to do some modifications. The first and foremost would be the light up mono eye. If you are going to modify a Gouf...or any suite with a mono eye you might as well make it light up. So I went to "The Shack".....I hesitated to write that...and picked up some LED's along with some housing. What I found actually suited my needs perfectly. They had a LED already in a chrome bezel that would look perfect for the mono eye, only problem was the LED was way to dim. I picked up an ultra bright red LED as well to swap out. The chrome bezel was actually pretty long and needed to be cut down a good bit, so I took the LED out and cut a good quarter inch off of it to shorten it.

Theres a good shot of what the head looks like with it installed. Next I had to drill a hole in that housing and in the the inside of the head so that I could get the eye to pivot just a bit. Glued a screw shaft the the bezel, it all fit pretty well.

I then had to swap out those LEDs so that his eye would be a lot brighter. I slowly sanded away at the new led because it was about 2mm's too big until it fit into the housing. I soldered a few wires to the LED, fed them through a hole in the bottom of the head and tested my connections.

Yeah, they were not kidding when they said ultra bright, I can barely look at it. Anyways I had a little fun with that and decided to drill some holes and make a cavity for the battery and switch. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with a reed switch to turn it on and off (Magnetic Switch).

Pin-Vice is a critical piece of modeling equipment, if its pinning metal miniatures or plastic figures for strength or just simply drilling a hole, they are necessity. So I fed it through the torso and into the waist. Theres the most room in the waist so I figured that would be a good place for the battery.

Drilled me an entry hole, then made a little hole in the back to access the future battery compartment.

Seems to be pretty happy with it....This is just temporary. Ill clean it up when I get ready to paint the inner frame.

I have a weird sense of humor....anyways back on the Gouf Train. The hole is going to be covered up by the back skirt so it works out quite nicely.

After that I decided to clean up some of the pieces and maybe then I would get an idea or two on what I could do next. I used some plastic cement to get rid of some seam lines, the shoulder armor is particularly bad on this model. They decided to split them in halves.

Nice and smooth, as is the rest of the kit thus far. So whats in store for the future? The next time I get a little extra cash I am going to order the metal pieces that I want to modify this kit with. Just some thrusters and some rivets. I am also going to order a new set of hands; the hands that come with this kit are absolutely horrible. I am planing to modify the weapons so that they have Rare Earth Magnets in the handles. and the same to the hands, this way I don't need to worry about them falling out. I also need to solve the problem with the arm falling with the weight of the Gatling Shield. I will keep track of it and see how it goes. Least it gives me a lot of time to plan a custom paint scheme....hmmm